Analysis: Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis

Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.

Plot Type : Tragedy

Vladimir and Estragon are tragic figures throughout the play, with seemingly no control over their life situation. The difference between Booker’s Tragedy plotline and the plotline of Waiting for Godot is that no one dies and nothing really new happens. Things do go wrong, but that’s not exclusive to the start and end of the play; things havebeen going wrong for as long as we can imagine, and we expect that they will continue to do so long after we leave the theater. So basically, we have the last stage of the Booker Plot ("Destruction or Death Wish Stage") throughout the entire work. This makes sense, since the concept of change or movement, in this case from one stage to another, would be inconsistent with the stagnant world of Waiting for Godot.